can

November 6, 2023

Guinness Meditations

I am in a dive bar drinking a Guinness. It’s from a can and therefore not the same as draft.

Weirdos abound here. I need weirdos in my bars.

Current reading: Soldier of the Great War, new James Ellroy novel, Abraham Lincoln’s speeches and letters, William James’ essays, Langston Hughes poems. I tried reading some William Faulkner short stories but they just don’t hold up anymore. I doubt his novels do either.

I read where the new Speaker of the House of Representatives once saw the face of Moses in the ceiling of legislative chamber and it directed him how to vote on a bill. No comment.

Earlier this morning I saw a homeless man laden with bags of cans and bottles somehow strapped to his body, bicycling and towing a yard work wagon that contained an elderly woman.

I have a new best friend: he’s a fat squirrel that I’ve dubbed the Red Chunk.

I picked up a couple disco compilations on CD for a few bucks. These are extended versions that never made it to radio and I have been fascinated by the musicianship of these often maligned genre. Some of the players really cut loose. Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie” is really something fantastic. What a groove! I also appreciate that there is absolutely zero irony with disco. You were supposed to move, feel free, feel happy, feel sexy, get laid. Can’t say that about Pearl Jam.

Thanksgiving looms. I’ve got to shake things up and do something novel. I rarely go looking to find a story, but I might this time. Holidays are good for this kind of sleuthing.

I’m not sure why I get so many compliments on a certain plaid cloth coat, the one I’ve owned for 25 years and bought for three bucks in a Coos Bay thrift store. Someone just recently told me she wanted to wear it around the house with nothing underneath. Good ol’ JC Penney Towncraft quality!

Why so many editorials about Matthew Perry? I’d rather read editorials about non-celebrities who battled addiction and didn’t have access to expensive professional help. Then we might actually learn something useful to enact social policy.

I saw a tall and older homeless man riding a bicycle and eating a bag of candy corn. His face was pulverized. I wonder if I’ll ever get that image out of my mind.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.